Cambridge

As this site has recently been updated to reflect, I am going to be studying at
the University of Cambridge come October 1. This is still something of a dream,
not yet feeling like a thing that is truly happening. Flights are booked, accommodation
is reserved, bus tickets from Heathrow are sorted—and it still doesn’t feel
real. To help it feel more real, I’ve decided to write down the process. When I
was going through this, from the outside, it was all a bit of a mystery. With any
luck this will make it less mysterious.

Is this something I want to do?

Probably not.

Perhaps a bit more explanation is in order. If you are, like me, studying computer
science, then a PhD is a terrible investment. Don’t do it just to become more
qualified. The running joke is that PhD stands for “Please hire,
Desperate”. Like all good jokes this has a kernel of truth. Most places won’t
want to touch you because you’re too expensive, don’t have a wide breadth of
knowledge, and lack “real-world skills” (despite the fact you have
probably developed excellent “real-world skills” during your PhD).

If you want to work in research and development, or at a university, then perhaps
this is the right option for you. Job options are slim, but in industry do tend
to be well paid. If you pick university, be warned: you will be underpaid for the
rest of your life. While not the “path of poverty” it is joked to be,
you will never be as well paid as your industry peers.

The above warning applies less strongly to Masters’ applicants, because you
don’t automatically become unhirable. But go in sceptical, particularly in
computer science: will this actually help me get where I want to be?

Story time
I love teaching. For me, it is a bit of a no-brainer to work at a university
and continue teaching. It is a bit of a disappointment that I will never be
rich, and it’s a bit hard hearing all my friends talk about the salaries
they are getting going into industry, knowing that my top salary will barely
match their starting salary. But I am hoping the old saying is true:
“Do a job you love, and you’ll never work another day in your
life.”

Assuming you have decided this is the life for you, let us start with…

Choosing a supervisor

Before we go any further, let me make one point abundantly clear: you cannot
start this process too soon. If you think 12 months ahead is possibly being too
forward, you are wrong. I first contacted my supervisor Dr Mateja Jamnik 15 months
before I was due to start studying. It was almost too late. Contact potential
supervisors now.

When deciding whether or not to undertake postgraduate study, I was advised (by
my excellent honours supervisor Dr Kourosh Neshatian) that I should not choose
the university, I should choose the supervisor. This is, of course, easier said
than done, because how to you find a supervisor? There are thousands of universities
around the world, each with a dozen or more potential researchers. Yes, a small
data-set by any standard, but still a bit much when there is no good algorithm to
filter by!

The hunt begins with (what else?) Google. Type in words that sound interesting.
See which names start to come back. Pick a couple of universities that sound nice,
and see who their researchers are. Then see who they collaborate with. Who were
their supervisors? If they are over a certain age, see who they supervised—they
are probably able to supervise you now! This sounds like it would lead to exponential
explosion, but a strange pattern starts to emerge: when you find your corner of
the academic world, it becomes apparent that there are no more than a hundred or
active researchers, and that they all know each other.

This limited pool is your set of potential supervisors. This is the step where
gut instinct takes over. Go through their personal web pages (admittedly easier
in computer science because the odds that they have a [still maintained] website
is better-than-average) and see who they are, how they think, how they work.
If there is anything that just doesn’t seem to gel, strike them from the list.
This is a person you will have to work closely with for 3+ years, so it’s worth
getting this right. If you have any doubts about whether you could get on well
with this person, it mightn’t be worth the risk! What if you’re wrong? Well, it
was better to err on the side of caution than to wind up 18 months into a project
where every conversation is a fight.

One tip I kept seeing was to get in touch with your potential supervisor’s past
students. This is probably excellent advice, but not something I did. It seemed
too intrusive to reach out to people to grill them on what their supervisor was
like. Plus, I wasn’t sure how much this would help. Just because they got on great
doesn’t mean I would—they’re not me, so why would their experience have any
impact on mine? Still, if you have the nerve to do this, I can’t see that it
would hurt.

Another piece of advice I received, which I partially listened to, is to consider
the location. It’s all very well finding the perfect adviser, but if they live in
the middle of a nuclear wasteland you might still want to pass. This place will
be your home for the foreseeable future, you have to like it. For example, I had
considered a few Australian supervisors, but I cannot see myself living in Australia
for three years, so decided it wasn’t worth it.

Some things to not do:
Choose the university based on its prestige. (I know, rich coming from
someone who is going to Cambridge, but hear me out.) Just because a university
is well-regarded doesn’t mean your PhD/Masters/whatever will be worth more. It
probably won’t hurt, but if you’re choosing somewhere for their name at the
expense of the supervisor or project, you won’t survive this.
Choose a supervisor because they’re a “rock-star”. Frankly, this
will probably hurt you more than help you, because if they really are a
rock-star in your field, they are probably already over-worked, supervising more
than a few students, and will probably remain that person who knocks on your door
once a month who you have to remind of your name. This is not a productive
relationship, don’t settle for it.
* Choose a supervisor because they have funding. Yes, it is super important to
have funding for your research, but having a supervisor with funding is a bit of
a double edged sword. That money probably comes from a grant for a specific
project, which means your topic is preselected. If this isn’t a deal-breaker,
there is another concern: if anything goes wrong in the supervision relationship,
you can’t easily change supervisor, as your funding is tied to them.

Story time
When I was looking for places to study, I initially didn’t consider Cambridge.
I looked at places that are admittedly still very ambitious, such as the
University of Edinburgh, but did not find a supervisor that I felt like reaching
out to. It was from here that I learned of Mateja, as she studied at Edinburgh.
It was somewhat of a disappointment to discover that Mateja worked at Cambridge,
because that meant that I now had to try and get in to Cambridge! Entry to
Cambridge is a bit competitive, to say the least. Nevertheless, I managed it,
and so can you!

Found someone? Good. Hold on, because now you have to decide on a project.

Picking a project

Now that you have a supervisor, you need to settle on what, exactly, you want to
devote the next three-to-seven years of your life towards studying. If you have
an idea already, great, put it forward, but be prepared for your supervisor to
shoot it down. They know how research works, you don’t. Take the hint.

Let’s be honest, most of us have no idea what to study. With any luck, your
supervisor (whom you have contacted, yes?) will have a list of projects either on
their website or (more likely) that they can email to you if you request it. These
make an excellent starting point. Don’t feel bound by the list, but it will
provide a jumping-off place for your search.

Finding your niche is something truly difficult. You need something achievable,
but also something no-one has done before. Sure, no-one has show whether
\(P \stackrel{?}{=} N\!P\),
but it also doesn’t make for an ideal PhD topic. I have no good tips for
this, as it is something that I find difficult. Finding the initial problem is
hard, but once you’re neck-deep in it, there seem to be problems everywhere.

If you cannot find a project that both you and your supervisor agree on, now is
the time to abandon ship and find a new supervisor. If you don’t like the
topic you choose, you will not be able to stay motivated. If they don’t like
the topic, they will not want (or possibly not be able) to help you when, inevitably,
there are challenges.

Picking a project is a research endeavour in its own right. Do not think that it
will be easy, something that you can just come up with over-night. This will take
potentially weeks of research to identify, narrow, and understand. Different universities
have different requirements for what you have to understand by enrollment. Some
will only ask you to know the general area; others will require you to have a six
page proposal ready when you apply to enrol, just to be sure you understand what
you’re signing up for!

Story time
I am terrible at finding research problems. It does get easier, I’ve
learned, because when you start to look at a problem you start to see holes.
But from the outside, it is nowhere near as obvious. This is where a truly
excellent supervisor steps in, offers some ideas, and lets you run with it.
For example, when I was contacting Mateja for the first time, I had a (frankly
terrible) half-idea that I put forward. I was trying to look like I knew what
I was doing. I did not. But Mateja put forward a few ideas that she was interested
in looking at, and then let me take any of them in a direction of my choosing.
This is how I ended up with “Automating representation change across domains
for reasoning”.

Enrollment

By this stage, you might be ready to enrol at your supervisor’s institution.
This is not where is becomes easy, I can assure you. Depending on the university,
this process ranges from mildly annoying, through to hopelessly frustrating! I was
fortunate that Cambridge’s process is mostly online, with a simple tracking
page for you to see (vaguely) what is happening. Could it be better? Of course.
Is it the worst out there? Absolutely not.

Cambridge was not the only university I applied to (eggs, baskets, etc.). I also
applied to the University of Canterbury. This was a very different process. For
starters, this is not an online application. Everything is done through good old
fashioned dead trees and talking to people—ew. Feedback was limited (although
substantially faster than at Cambridge) and the whole process was fairly poorly
documented. That’s not to say every part of it was worse: the actual application
form was much simpler, mostly because it expected less. All it needed for a research
topic, for example, was a tentative title. That’s it. Cambridge demanded a
multi-page proposal! Yikes!

Assuming you manage to wrangle all the paperwork (why do I need another photo of
myself?) and shepherd your referees into order (yes, that deadline is this week;
yes, I sent that email three weeks ago), congratulations, you have taken literally
only the first step of dozens to being enrolled. That was, however, the last step
where you had any semblance of control. You fate is with the gods of academia now:
the admissions department.

If you know a soothsayer, now is the time to give them a call. They are possibly
your best chance of understanding any decisions that are about to be made. If you
have a passionate supervisor, this step is much easier, as they will hopefully
charge in to battle to support your application. At Cambridge, the enrollment
process involves a Skype interview with your nominated supervisor: this is a great
chance to have a first chat with them face-to-face. Until this point most of your
contact was via email. This step can make-or-break an application—after
all, if they’re not willing to say you are worthy of a place, there is no
way in hell you are getting in. But if they do support you, there is not much
that will stop the process: your grades are probably fine if you have got this
far, it just becomes a numbers game. All you can do is hope you don’t fall
below the cut-off line. Do not expect your progress at this stage to be fast.
Universities would be out-paced by a glacier, all you can do is wait. Well, wait
and apply for funding.

Funding

Do not do a self-funded PhD. It is not worth it. If the research is worth anything,
someone will pay you to do it. The best kind of funding comes from trusts or
universities, because these do not tie you to a specific supervisor or topic.
However, this also makes these sources of funding the most competitive. When you
start thinking about funding is also important, and may be worth researching up
to several years in advance, in order to prepare the best possible version of
yourself (note: I tried this, it didn’t work).

Funding is very much a make-or-break exercise, and the amount of funding you need
depends on where you want to study, whether you are a resident of that country,
and how much money you need to survive. Do not be stingy when applying for funding:
yes, you might feel like you’re being a pain constantly asking for references,
but you are doing this to make sure you can survive. You cannot work full-time
while you are studying, don’t trick yourself into thinking that you can.
If you are going overseas, remember that you will be stung twice: you will have
to pay international fees, which demands a larger scholarship; and you will not
have access to all your usual resources, or employment, for potentially some time.

Most universities are very good about discussing the amount of money you will need
to survive for the duration of your degree. For example, as an international student
studying towards a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, the
University estimates that I will need about £40,000 per year, covering both
fees and living costs. Yikes. Be prepared for a big number. (The US is worse, where
a comparable university would be $45,000 just for fees—living costs are extra!)
One thing to be aware of is that their “living costs” estimate assumes
you live like a pauper and like it. Even if your scholarship covers living costs,
be prepared to do some work (e.g. as a supervisor/tutor/T.A. depending on country)
to top up the funds. If you choose to study domestic, you will not need scholarships
that are quite so huge, because often study is partially funded by the government
for domestic students (at least, that is the case in Australasia).

Story time
Finding funding was a huge problem for me. In fact, it reached the point where
I though I was not going to be able to go to Cambridge because almost all the
scholarship opportunities had gone. I had been going to interviews up and down
the country (and internationally) for months, always making it to the final few,
but never being able to secure the funding. Be prepared for a lot of disappointments
when searching for funding. There was a lot of cheering and crying when I received
the email saying I had received the Hamilton Cambridge International Scholarship,
as it was the only thing that kept the dream alive.

The good news

Every story of “how I got in to grad school” always has an element
of survivor bias: the people writing these pieces are the ones that made it.
There are a significant number more who did not make it. This essay is no different,
because I also managed to pass every hurdle on the way (somehow). But with any
luck, this story has been interesting, and might give you some guidance on what
form your own path will take.

I do hope that you will also get good news on your application, but don’t
worry if this is not the case—just try again. If you definitely want to
start studying at a certain time, apply to work with a different supervisor: there
are still plenty out there who would be wonderful to work with. If you really do
have your heart set on a certain project with a certain person, wait it out. Get
a job for 12 months and earn a bit of pocket money. Sometimes this is unavoidable,
due to terms: southern hemisphere applicants have to wait twelve months (November
through October) between the end of their academic year and the start of that in
the northern hemisphere.

And if you did get good news, let me be the first to say congratulations! This is
no small achievement, you have successfully been selected from literally thousands
of applicants to be good enough to study at the most advanced level available.
But for you, the fun has only just started. Get that visa, book those tickets,
find that flat/room/cardboard box that you will call home for the next 3+ years.
This is an exciting time, grab it with both hands and run with it. You will laugh,
you will cry, and you will almost certainly think this was a bad decision. It is
not. You are strong, you will survive this, and you too will go on to perpetuate
the survivor bias that leads us all to postgraduate study.

I might be wrong

I am just at the beginning of this journey myself, so all of the above is just a
reflection of how I went through the application process. I might find that it
all was a load of bollocks, that I got through by the skin of my teeth, and that
you should never, ever do things this way.

With that in mind, I present to you a collection of resources I found immensely
useful when perparing to study. There is a computer science and Cambridge slant
to these resources, but they might be useful to other disciplines too.

For a slightly more UK-oriented source of support, there was the ever-wonderful
Student Room, which is
a forum for UK students of every age group. If you are looking to go to a well-known
university, there will almost certainly be a thread dedicated to the students who,
like you, are anxiously awaiting confirmation by the university. Just knowing that
you’re not alone is one of the most comforting things you get feel.

Just trying to get a feel for different universities (or more specifically, the
university where your supervisor works)? Then YouTube really is a wonderful resource.
There are many vloggers that document their process and, while mostly undergraduate,
they can give you a hint as to what the lifestyle is like. My personal favourite
is Jake Wright, who is particularly great
simply because his video editing is superb.

If you ever need a reminder that yes, this stuff really is hard, the wonderful
Thesis Whisperer will be able to set you straight.
Dr Inger Mewburn works at The Australian National University and makes sure that
all those PhD students really do know what they’re meant to be doing. Her
blog is a wonderful collection of accumulated knowledge, and well worth a look.